The truth shall set you free (fiction)

Well, the time for me has come to come clean. I’ve been “baring my soul” in one form or another for a little over ten years now and I’m starting to suffer from a guilty conscience.. I don’t know when it actually started started but it’s been gnawing at me for quite some time now. I’ve even begun to start losing sleep over quite a few things that I’ve done over that time and truth be told, I feel a bit ashamed of myself.

I don’t know what the impetus was that prompted me to start such a thing. Maybe I have some kind of self inflicted inferiority complex or some deep rooted fear that me made act the way I did. I hope you all will forgive me for the transgressions that I’m about to list and I offer up my sincere apologies to anybody who took me seriously during my time here. For any of you long time users who might consider me a “friend”, that goes double. For you newer folks, please consider this as a lessons learned about what NOT to do when submitting your efforts here at E2.

For what it’s worth, I’m now actively undergoing counseling for these transgressions and one of my steps on the road to recovery was to finally, at last, speak the dreaded truth.

Whew, this is gonna be tough but I’ve got to start somewhere.

Lie Number One

I am not now nor have ever been a United States Marine. Oh sure, I read about them in books and on the internet and I just figured it would be a harmless little prank by calling myself one. But, once that ball starts rolling down hill it’s pretty hard to stop and the so-called snowball effect took hold. I offer up my sincere apologies to those that did serve and am ashamed of myself for usurping their fine reputation.

Lie Number Two

Over the years I’ve chronicled many health related issues having to do with a series of heart attacks and a number of surgeries related to them. In truth, I’m as fit a fiddle and could probably run a marathon in the blazing summer heat without breaking a sweat. My intention in writing about those kind of things was to gain the sympathy vote from all of the users out there who might otherwise not have paid any attention to me.

Lie Number Three

I’ve written many a tale about growing up on the rough and tumble streets of Brooklyn, New York and some childhood memories that went along with that. In fact, I’ve never even been to Brooklyn. Instead, I grew up in a six bedroom mansion in an affluent community that was dotted with white picket fences and everybody drove a Mercedes. Again, I don’t know what the impetus was for me to try and deceive you. Maybe it was because it was easier to write about those kind of things than it was to write about being raised by a nanny and born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

Lie Number Four

I've also romanticized many escapades that have to do with drinking. I felt that it would help to reinforce my reputation as a hard charging macho type man of the world. I'm sorry to inform you that I've never taken a sip of the demon known as alcohol in my entire life. I'm really a teetotaler at heart and would never poison this temple of a body with such a thing.

Lie Number Five

This is the toughest one of them all and it pains me to say that the theme of many of my so called personal recollections doesn’t exist. I “invented” her about nine years ago to fill a void in my personal life. Once I got started writing about her it became all too easy to assume the identity of a child and all of those heartwarming poems that “she” wrote were the doings of a frustrated man in his mid forties and early fifties just looking to assume another personality. Was that cruel of me? The short answer is “Yes” but at the time I thought I wasn’t doing anybody any harm.

There's probably a bunch more interspersed throughout the nodegel and I'll address them on a case by case basis but the ones I've listed above are what I considered the "heavy hitters".

I hope you all will forgive me for what I’ve done. For what it’s worth, I’m in the process of auditing many of my write ups and removing all of the ones in which I’ve committed this grand offense. Needless to say I find my past behavior here despicable and by telling you all of this I hope to salvage what little is left of my self worth.

I can only hope you wish me well as this period of healing begins and I start my new personal journey dedicated to finding the truth.